The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and The Nation are asking people to take action against the deportation of aspiring citizens.

Just minutes after yesterday's protest in New York by striking workers, McDonald's announced that the franchise owner accused of exploiting temporary workers in the country on J-1 visas will be selling his three stores and will no longer be associated with the company, the Nation's Josh Eidelson reports. The workers from Latin America and Asia who worked at the Pennsylvania fast-food restaurants allege that store owner Andy Cheung provided them with sub-standard employer-owned housing to live in, forced them to work shifts of up to 25 consecutive hours and threatened them with retaliation if they complained or refused to work.

Following a strike last week at several Pennsylvania franchisee locations, McDonald's workers will rally in New York on Thursday and announce a March 26 mobilization outside the corporation's Chicago headquarters. The workers are students in the United States on J-1 visas from Asia and Latin America who say they were given sub-standard employer-owned housing to live in, shifts of up to 25 consecutive hours and were threatened with retaliation if they complained or refused to work. The National Guestworker Alliance has been working closely with the students.

Fix the Debt is the most hypocritical corporate PR campaign in decades, an ambitious attempt to convince the country that another cataclysmic economic crisis is around the corner and that urgent action is needed. Its strategy is pure Astroturf: assemble power players in business and government under an activist banner, then take the message outside the Beltway and give it the appearance of grassroots activism by manufacturing an emergency to infuse a sense of imminent crisis.

"Fix the Debt" portrays itself as a nonpartisan group designed to convince government to do something drastic about the national debt, which it says is a significant danger to the country. And despite widespread evidence from economists that their proposals would hurt the economy, Fix the Debt's members are pushing for a set of policies based on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans and benefit cuts to lifelines like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Some of the most vocal opponents of the move to change U.S. Senate rules, including a proposal to help unblock Senate gridlock by ending the “silent filibuster” and actually forcing filibustering senators to take to the floor and talk if they want to block legislation, are lobbyists who profit from Senate dysfunction.

The Nation’s Lee Fang outlines how Republican-led filibusters and “silent holds” on nominations have resulted in some Big Business windfalls for corporations that just happened to be large contributors to the senators’ campaigns.

The extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has announced it is disbanding its task force that developed and pushed the rash of voter suppression and “stand your ground ” laws passed in recent  years by Republican-controlled state legislatures. But don't believe that ALEC is backing off its attacks on workers, their wages and their unions. Meanwhile, the group continues to lose key members, with two more major companies severing ties with the right-wing group

Just over a year ago, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans seize control of both branches of the legislatures in 11 states. Then, while talking up the notion of job creation, they set about cutting their state and local public workforces with a ferocity unseen in decades.  The most recent numbers, according to the Roosevelt Institute, are stark.

The 11 states are Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Together, they eliminated 87,900 state and local public jobs—more than 40 percent of the total cut.

The candidates in the Republican race to the presidential nomination may still be criss-crossing the country slamming each other for not being extreme enough, but there is certainly one thing they all agree on writes John Nichols—they hate unions!

More than a dozen students at the University of Virginia are the 11th day of a hunger strike organized by the Living Wage at UVA campaign. The students are demanding a living wage, safer working conditions and better job security for university and university contracted workers, some of whom make just $7.25 an hour.